Wednesday, 12 August 2015

The Mentalists is closing early. Here's a look why, and which Richard Bean plays could work in the West End?

The current West End production of Richard Bean’s The Mentalists is closing early at the
Wyndham’s Theatre by almost a month. The ‘star’ cast (Stephen Merchant and
Steffan Rhodri), 50 £10 day seats at every performance and success of the
playwright have not been able to make this production a hit, instead earning
mixed reviews and rumours of audience capacity being in single figures for some
performances. Indeed, it was worrying when Merchant was doing the press for the
play that he admitted not fully reading the play before agreeing to do it, thus
refusing to do the (admittedly unnecessary) naked scenes. It was also
noticeable that many of the reviews mentioned the high ticket prices (some
around £100) for a play that was effectively played on the landing to the
Lyttleton Theatre (the Loft) in the early 2000s in a design to attract new and
young audiences.

The play itself is fine. Two best friends Ted and Morrie meet
in a North London hotel room with the task of filming a campaign video for
Ted’s idea of founding a cult which advertises Utopia. In actual fact it’s
probably just based on the idea of ‘things ain’t what they used to be’ and
allows for Ted to scam some people of their money. Morrie, meanwhile, is a more
down-to-earth character: a hairdresser with an alluring libido and a knack for
stories that put him akin to Gavin and
Stacey’s Nessa (played by Ruth Jones with Rhodri playing her partner Dave).
In the second scene (no acts as such in this play text) it is revealed that Ted
has a sinister, murderous (literally) secret which ends with the police
surrounding the hotel and kicking the door down.

It may not be as high tempo as One Man, Two Guvnors or Great
Britain or England People Very Nice but
it is an early Bean that shows his skills at funny dialogue and intriguing
characters in insular places.

The play is surely cheap to run: a two-hander with a couple
of stage hands to kick the door down surely. There are no scene changes or
massive effects required. The costumes were surely cheap even if the actors
that inhabit them weren’t. And the play has a playwright with good form, the
producers digging up one of his early plays hoping it will make good West End
material. It has an experienced stage actor who impressed very much in Posh, and a mildly popular TV actor/
writer/ stand-up making his West End debut. So what went wrong? Maybe it was a
mixture of high ticket prices, an unknown play, a cast which perhaps doesn’t
quite appeal to either regular theatregoers or fans of The Office, etc. and mixed reactions, both critically and
word-of-mouth.

But the producers were right (in my opinion) in giving a
Richard Bean play a go thinking it would be a hit. So what other of his plays could
do well in the commercial sector? Maybe another one of his early plays?
Something more farcical? An adaptation? Something new? Let’s take a look:

Early Works

Toast (1999) was his first
professionally-staged play is set in a Northern bread factory in the 1970s.
With the factory at threat, so are the workers’ livelihoods. Under the Whaleback (2003) is set in
three fishing vessels throughout recent history, from a rocky trip, mid-storm
to an inert present-day museum piece. Harvest
(2005) is a momentous play charting roughly 90 years of one pig farm and
its owners from pre-WW1 to present day. All three share northern meticulously
detailed settings, big characters akin to Johnny Rooster Byron and a sense of
nostalgia and lamenting over the decline of English, northern, working class
industries. Of the three, Toast is
perhaps the best choice for a transfer. The Park Theatre’s production starring
Matthew Kelly is out on tour next year and so could come in to London. It (as
is Under the Whaleback) is a detailed
study of male friendships relationships.

Farces

If The Big Fellah
(2010), The Heretic (2011) and The English Game (2008) are not your cup
of tea and you prefer something more farcical, then Smack Family Robinson
(2003, revised 2013) and In The Club
(2007) might remind you more of One Man,
Two Guvnors. Smack Family Robinson
is about a crooked family, brought together and thrown apart by love and what
they do for a living. There are some very funny bits of irony, uses of societal
nostalgia and likeable caricatures. But (perhaps like Mike Exton’s Barking in Essex) the comedy doesn’t
really get going as it does in Frayn’s Noises
Off. In The Club, however, is a fast-paced farce, with jokes and visual
gags aplenty. Its setting of a Strasbourg hotel and cast of incompetent EU
politician characters is also highly resonant and speaks to audiences
disenfranchised with current politics. But, like many farces, it sometimes goes
too far. An ambitious play, nonetheless, though.

Adaptations

From Boucicault to Mamet,
Bean has been involved with many adaptations, the Goldini one (One Man, Two Guvnors after The Servant of Two Masters) being the
most successful. Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid is a funny French farce. Miles
Malleson’s translation is poetically written but perhaps a bit fussy too.
Richard Bean, however, has tightened the play and turned it into The Hypochondriac, which had a
successful run at the Almeida in 2005 and in Bath last year. (I would’ve seen
that if it transferred over Hay Fever).
Finally, there is The Count of
Monte Christo. It was supposed to be on at the National Theatre over Christmas
a few years ago (remember?) but was pulled when an early draft was decided to
be not quite ready. It was replaced by Pinero’s The Magistrate but was published earlier this year. Perhaps this
could get staged somewhere?

Something New

Despite the early closure of The Mentalists, Richard Bean is in demand. He apparently has two
plays lined up for Hull in 2017 for city of culture celebrations, a play about
snooker for The Crucible, Sheffield, next year, a play lined for Matthew
Warchus at the Old Vic and is said to be interested in writing about the recent
FIFA scandal. Whether any of these plays could work in the West End is another
matter. After all, some said that Great
Britain lost its impact once it transferred. But, I for one certainly look
forward to future productions of his plays.